Page 24 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“We hang out. We got similar grievances. That’s what Damon says. ‘Similar grievances.’ Man, I’m pressed.”

“Impressed with what?”

“Pressed. Like a weight on me. Like you’re layin’ on me, but not that nice. You gotta lay on me.”

“We’ll do the laying later, sweetie. When you feel better. You sell dabs or something to Damon?”

“Shit, no. Old Bead would cut my nuts off.”

“Why?”

“Only Bead supplies Damon and only what Bead wants him to have. He doesn’t want any chance of Damon flushin’ himself.”

“Flushing himself?”

“Takin’ an overdose. I am so heavy.” He’s slurring his words. “I never been so heavy.”

“Are you all right, baby?”

“I’m a freakin’ whale. But I’m okay. Don’t you go nowhere.”

“Where would I go?” she asks.

“I’m slidin’ away, but I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here.”

Below the dish towel, his mouth forms a loose smile. “I’m a man of mystery.” And then he’s snoring.

She lifts the cloth from his eyes and takes it to the kitchen. With paper towels, she quickly cleans off the breakfast table and tucks the two chairs under it. She returns the carton of orange juice and the box of candy to the refrigerator, the package of cinnamon rolls to the bread box. She washes the two tall glasses, puts them where Morgan found them, empties the remaining champagne down the drain, turns on the water long enough to flush away the smell, and wipes the sink dry. When she leaves, shetakes with her all the used paper towels, the empty champagne bottle, the cork, and the wire hood that once restrained the cork.

Removing every proof that she’s been here is not likely to induce him to believe that he hallucinated her as he did the birds with human faces. However, intuition suggests that without evidence of her visit to prod his memory, his recollection of what she looked like and what he told her will be hazy at best. Intuition has always been reliable, and not merely in the search for gemstones. Her intuition is a gift no less than it is for Lupo and the wolves that he leads through the perils of the wilds.

She walks the quarter of a mile to her pickup and returns home by way of the forest-service road rather than pass by the Slyke house again. During the drive, she mulls over what she has learned and what, if anything, she can do with the knowledge. She suspects that even if Morgan never discovers that she was Connie Cooper, he’ll eventually come into her life again and with lethal intent.

28

LOVE NOTE

Now, nine months after her visit with Morgan Slyke, Vida has burned the photo of Belden Bead that Deputy Nash Deacon left to torment her. She has thrown away Deacon’s gift of red roses and disposed of his toothbrush and toothpaste. Having also braced the front and back doors with two-by-fours to defeat his police lock-release device, Vida takes a hot shower.

After the shampoo rinses from her hair, as steam fogs the glass of the stall and clouds the air, she’s quickly overcome by a feeling that she usually must concentrate for some time to achieve, by a perception that she is liberated from the tyranny of self. Perhaps this is not merely a feeling or perception, but a true condition; she isn’t interested in analyzing the moment, only in the experience of it. She dwells neither in the past nor in the future, assailed neither by memories nor by expectations. Awareness of her body—its current aches, its potential for pleasure—recedes from her. She does not think, but is thought; she does not know, but is known. She is the rushing water and the susurrant sound of it. She is the heat of the water and the steam. She waits as patiently as she has at times waited for wolves, although in this instance she is awaiting something greater for which she has no image, waits without either hope or foreboding. When she becomes aware of her hair slick against her neck, the contours of her body as theflow of water shapes it, and the residual fragrance of soap, she has submitted again to the tyranny of self. Although she has arrived at no new comprehension of herself or of the world as she’s known it, she’s no longer weary.

She dresses for the evening. In the library, from her uncle’s collection of vinyl recordings, she selects Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 23 in A Major, K. 488. For a minute or so, she stands very still, listening to the opening movement. No matter how often she hears this music, it inspires a soaring optimism.

In the kitchen, she goes to the refrigerator to get the bottle of iced tea that she’d wanted earlier, before she found the roses and the photo of Belden Bead and been distracted by the need to dispose of them. The previous day, she’d baked an egg-custard pie but hadn’t cut it. She’d intended to have a slice for dessert this evening. The pie has been violated. Nash Deacon has not simply cut a piece; he’s treated the entire pie as if she prepared it just for him, digging into it here and there, consuming what he wished, returning it to the fridge with his dirty fork. Beside the pie lies an envelope.

With Rubenstein’s performance of K. 488 filling this small house, the base emotion of anger in all its gradations eludes her. She is instead filled with steely resolve and courage that are more in the spirit of the music.

She uses a spatula to scrape the remaining pie into the trash bag to which she’d consigned the roses. After washing the baking pan and the fork, drying them, and putting them away, she sits at the table with the message he left while she was at the placer mine.

The envelope isn’t sealed. From it, Vida extracts a sheet of paper, which she unfolds. Apparently, he wrote it on his computer, but he won’t have saved the document. To a court, it provesneither intent nor the writer’s identity. He has invited himself to dinner.

Dear One,

I am so looking forward to a home-cooked

dinner tomorrow evening at six o’clock. I

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